The Book That Changed
My Life

Lloyd
Alexander

Lloyd Alexander has won The
National Book Award for Children's Books twice: in 1971
for The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian and
in 1982 for Westmark. He has also been honored
as a Finalist five other times.

Books that changed my life? Every book that I've loved
has changed my life in one way or another and keeps
on changing it. So I'll have to limit myself to a small
sampling. I must certainly thank Shakespeare, Les
Miserables, War and Peace, The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, the poetry of Paul Eluard.

Singling out one particular work that influenced my
own writing-so many come crowding into mind. Even so,
for the moment I'll name David Copperfield. As
a child, my odd assortment of relatives, boisterous,
bickering, exuberant drifters along the margins of things
made no sense to me. Until Dickens showed me they were,
in effect, Dickensian; and, as I came to understand,
ultimately heroic, all of them. As it influenced my
view of the world, inevitably it influenced my writing
about it.